- Neom planners fear The Line could kill large numbers of birds, the Wall Street Journal reported.
- The futuristic mirrored structure sits on a migration route used by billions of birds.
- The line includes twin towers 1,640 feet tall, spaced 656 feet apart.
Neom planners appear to fear that the megaproject’s mirrored “horizontal skyscraper” could kill “significant numbers of birds”.
According to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, the concerns center around The Line’s location, which is on a migration route used by billions of birds.
In planning documents, the designers wrote that it was “inevitable that significant numbers of birds would perish,” illustrating their concerns with a drawing of a dead northern flicker, according to the report.
In a February promotional video for Neom, The Line’s development director Denis Hickey said he saw the project as an “opportunity to create a better city model for interacting with the landscape, nature and the environment”.
He said the developers believed “The Line was going to be an example for the rest of the world.”
The plans for The Line are already an architectural challenge.
The structure is designed as 1,640-foot-tall mirrored twin towers, spaced 656 feet apart. According to Neom’s website, there will also be no roads, vehicles or emissions and will run on 100% renewable energy.
Plans for the Shining City have reportedly been scaled back in recent months.
The line was initially planned to accommodate nine million people by 2030. However, a recent report from Bloomberg indicates that this estimate has been lowered to fewer than 300,000 people by that date.
Saudi officials insisted the project was on track despite reports to the contrary.
Faisal Al Ibrahim, the Saudi economy minister, told CNBC there was “no change of scale.”
Representatives for Neom did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside of normal business hours.
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